Democracy and Poverty in India

Asia Research Centre invites to a guest lecture by

Yogendra Yadav, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi

on

Democracy and Poverty in India

India presents us with a paradox of the co-existence of democracy and poverty, specifically the continued existence of electoral democracy with popular participation along with mass poverty. The paradox is not trivial: we have good reasons to be surprised about it. Making sense of this paradox takes us to the explanatory framework that may shed light on the mechanism that makes this paradoxical co-existence possible. The framework may also enable us to do a little more: understand the changes over time and differences across the various states in the relationship of democracy with poverty.

 Yogendra Yadav is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi since 2004. Currently he is a Fellow at Institute of Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg) at Berlin for the year 2009-2010.

Professor Yadav's areas of interests include democratic theory, election studies, survey research, political theory, modern Indian political thought and Indian socialism. He has co-authored State of Democracy in South Asia (OUP, 2008) and co-edited (with Sandeep Shastri and K C Suri) Electoral Politics in Indian States (OUP, 2009). He has also co-authored (with Alfred Stepan and Juan Linz) Democraccy in Multi-national Societies, due for publication in 2010 from John Hopkins University Press. He has been involved in designing and coordinating the National Election Studies, the most comprehensive series of academic surveys of the Indian electorate, from 1996 to 2009.

In 2008 Professor Yadav was awarded the Malcom Adishesiah Award for contribution to development studies. In 2009 the International Political Science Association honoured Professor Yogendra Yadav with the first Global South Solidarity Award "in recognition of outstanding work on the politics of the developing world".